The Unified Theory of Change: How Your Brain Creates Reality

Hi there,

What’s the Story?

Hope you’re ready for a deep dive, because this week we’re going big! Things on my end are good. I’m taking some time off, which is much needed.

In this week’s article, I’ve been synthesizing years of study across psychology, neuroscience, NLP, hypnosis, and behavioral science, trying to answer one massive question: How does it all fit together?

Over the past few years, I’ve been obsessed with developing a unified theory of human experience. Not because I love complexity (though I apparently do), but because I hate scattered, fragmented approaches to change. Too many people engage in meditation without understanding their beliefs, change habits without addressing their emotions, or attempt to influence others without first working on themselves.

What if there were a framework that connected everything? What if you could see how mindfulness, CBT, breathing techniques, habit change, and storytelling all work together as part of one system?

Buckle up. This week, we’re mapping the entire mental game, how your brain creates your reality, and how you can intentionally redesign that reality from the inside out.

Have you watched my latest video on YouTube? Check out this week’s short video here.

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The Unified Theory of Change: How Your Brain Creates Reality (And How to Redesign It)

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes 07 seconds

Your brain lives in a black box inside your skull.

It can’t directly experience the world. It has no windows, no direct access to reality. Instead, it has to guess what’s happening based on three sources of information:

Interoception: What’s happening inside your body
Exteroception: What’s happening outside your body (through your senses)
Memory/Concepts: What happened before, and what it might mean

Your brain takes this information, makes predictions about what’s coming next, and then adjusts two things:

– your internal state (feelings, neurochemistry, hormones) and

– your external actions (what you do in the world).

This creates a continuous loop. Your actions change your environment, which changes your sensory input, which changes your internal state, which changes your memory of the experience, which changes your future predictions.

Understanding this loop is the key to everything. Because once you see how the system works, you can intervene at any point to change your entire experience of reality.

The Three Worlds of Change

Based on how your brain processes reality, there are three distinct worlds where you can create change:

The Inner World: Your beliefs, emotions, focus, and stories

The Outer World: Your habits, goals, influence, and environment

The Somatic World: Your health, movement, energy, and physical state

Most approaches to change only work on one world. That’s why they fail. Real transformation happens when you understand how all three worlds interact and influence each other.

Let me break down each world and show you how to master it.

The Inner World: Mastering Your Mental Reality

Your inner world is where your brain creates meaning from experience. It’s not just what happens to you, it’s the story you tell yourself about what happens to you.

The Four Pillars of Inner Change:

1. Beliefs: Ideas you feel certain about.

These are thoughts with conviction behind them. When you change your beliefs about what happened in the past, you literally change your memory of those experiences. Your beliefs act as filters, determining what you notice and how you interpret it.

2. Emotions: Your feeling state in the moment.

Research shows that how you feel affects what you believe (affective realism). When you’re angry, you see an angry world. When you’re calm, you see a calmer world. Your emotional state literally shapes your reality.

3. Focus: Where you direct your mental attention.

What you focus on expands. The questions you ask yourself, the thoughts you choose to think, the mental requests you make, all of this shapes your experience. Focus is how you, what I call “brain prompt” yourself toward better thinking.

4. Stories: The narratives you construct about your experience.

You don’t remember experiences verbatim. You remember the story you told yourself about those experiences. Change the story, change the memory. Change the memory, change your future behavior.

Tools for Inner World Mastery:

Training Your Mind:

Mindfulness (Jon Kabat-Zinn style): Stress reduction through present-moment awareness
Mindfulness (Ellen Langer style): Noticing what’s new and different in each moment
Meditation: Various forms to improve focus and emotional regulation
Hypnosis/NSDR: Deep relaxation states for reprogramming the subconscious
Neuroscience applications: Understanding dopamine, serotonin, and other neurochemicals and how to leverage them.

Changing Your Mind:

Philosophical approaches: Stoicism, Zen Buddhism for reframing adversity
Psychological methods: CBT, Reality Therapy, Logotherapy for cognitive restructuring
NLP techniques: Rapid belief change and mental programming
Behavioral economics: Understanding and correcting cognitive biases
Positive psychology: Focusing on strengths and well-being

The Outer World: Mastering Your Actions and Influence

Your outer world is where your internal reality meets external results. It’s not enough to think differently; you need to act differently and influence your environment.

The Four Pillars of Outer Change:

1. Habits: Consistent actions that compound over time.

Small daily actions create massive long-term results. Master your habits, master your life.

2. Goals: Targeted outcomes you’re working toward.

Both lifestyle goals (habit-based) and achievement goals (result-based) give direction to your actions.

3. Influence: Your ability to impact others and your environment.

How you persuade, motivate, and create change in the world around you.

4. Stories: The narratives you share with others.

The stories you tell shape other people’s beliefs and actions. Master storytelling, master influence.

Tools for Outer World Mastery:

Behavioral Change:

Habit science: Understanding cue, routine, reward loops for behavior change
Strategic thinking: Long-term planning and scenario development
Life design: Creating systems and environments for success

Influence and Impact:

Classical rhetoric: Ethos, logos, pathos for persuasion
Behavioral economics: Nudging and choice architecture
Influence psychology: Cialdini’s principles and beyond
NLP language patterns: Milton Model and Meta Model for communication
Mind-changing technologies: Street epistemology, motivational interviewing, deep canvassing
Storytelling strategies

The Somatic World: Mastering Your Physical Reality

Your body isn’t separate from your mind; it’s the foundation of your mind. How you feel physically directly impacts how you think and what you’re capable of achieving.

The Five Pillars of Somatic Change:

1. Health: Your overall physical condition and energy levels

2. Physicality: Your posture, movement patterns, and body language

3. Sensory Experience: What you expose yourself to and how you process it

4. Movement: How you use your body through exercise and daily activity

5. Energy: Your vitality and capacity for sustained action

Tools for Somatic World Mastery:

Foundational Practices:

Nutrition: Fueling your brain and body optimally
Sleep: Getting restorative rest for cognitive function
Exercise: Regular movement for neurochemical optimization
Breathing techniques: Nervous system regulation through breath control
Physical awareness: Noticing and responding to bodily signals

Advanced Techniques:

Movement practices: Yoga, tai chi, martial arts, dance
Stress exposure: Cold therapy, high-intensity training for resilience
Therapeutic approaches: EMDR, Havening, somatic experiencing, EFT
Environmental design: Creating spaces that support your goals
Somatic therapy: Working with how your body represents your emotions and experiences

The Integration Principle: Why All Three Worlds Matter

Here’s what most people miss: these three worlds are interconnected. Change in one world creates change in the others.

Inner → Outer: Change your beliefs and you change your actions

Inner → Somatic: Change your thoughts and you change your physiology

Outer → Inner: Change your habits and you change your identity

Outer → Somatic: Change your environment and you change your energy

Somatic → Inner: Change your posture and you change your confidence

Somatic → Outer: Change your energy and you change your performance

This is why piecemeal approaches fail. You can’t just think your way to success, act your way to happiness, or breathe your way to better relationships. You need all three worlds working together.

The Unified Change Strategy

When you want to create any change in your life, ask yourself:

Inner World Questions:

What beliefs do I need to update?
What emotional state would serve me better?
Where should I focus my attention?
What new story do I need to tell myself?

Outer World Questions:

What habits need to change?
What goals should I set?
How can I influence my environment?
What stories should I share with others?

Somatic World Questions:

How is my physical health impacting this?
What movement or posture would help?
What sensory environment do I need?
How can I optimize my energy?

The Compound Effect of Integrated Change

When you work on all three worlds simultaneously, you create compound effects:

Your meditation practice (inner) makes your workouts more focused (somatic), which gives you energy for better habits (outer)
Your improved nutrition (somatic) enhances your mood (inner), which makes you more influential (outer)
Your new morning routine (outer) strengthens your identity (inner), which improves your posture and presence (somatic)

Each world reinforces the others, creating upward spirals of improvement instead of isolated changes that fade over time.

You don’t live in one world; you live in three. Your experience of reality emerges from the constant interaction between your inner mental world, your outer behavioral world, and your somatic physical world.

Master one world and you’ll see some improvement. Master two worlds and you’ll see significant change. Master all three worlds working together, and you’ll transform your entire experience of being human.

This isn’t just theory; it’s a practical framework for understanding how every tool, technique, and approach to change fits together. Whether you’re doing therapy, meditation, habit change, or influence training, you’re working on one or more of these three worlds.

The question isn’t which approach is best. The question is: how can you integrate approaches from all three worlds to create the life you actually want?

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